It’s time for my September 2023 Income Report along with all my traffic details.
It’s my first income report; and my first month as a full-time blogger!
So, I’m also going to explain why I’m doing this.
Here we go!
Disclosure: Some links are affiliate links. If you use them, I may earn a commission in some cases, at no extra cost to you. Written by Nelly Darbois, a trained french physical therapist, scientific writer, and entrepreneur.
Summary
Why did I start posting my income reports?
Why do I, a physical therapist and professional health blogger, want to share my blog’s income and traffic?
Reason 1: I aim to provide a more realistic perspective on earn “passive income” from a blog. In contrast to the overly optimistic claims often made by dream sellers.
I started my blog in October 2019 out of passion, and it later evolved into a side business. It wasn’t until August 2023 that it became my full-time job.
Reason 2: As someone outside the United States, there’s a lack of such reports from people like me, and I want to contribute to a more diverse and global understanding of this topic.
Income reports from independent publishers really helped motivate me. Now, it’s my turn!
Reason 3: Sharing my income publicly makes me vulnerable to criticism, but I believe it’s essential for personal growth and transparency.
It’s often frowned upon to talk about money in the healthcare world. I’m willing to embrace the constructive feedback that may come with it.
Earnings
I’ll first break down exactly where my income came from, what each source is and then all my blogging fees for the month.
Income:
- Hitopic (+Mediavine): €1,878
- Ebooks: €1,055
- Affiliate: €385
- Youtube: €98
Total: €3,415
Note: €1 ≈ $1 USD
- Hitopic –This was my ad management company. They placed and managed all the ads that you saw on my blog. I’m speaking in the past tense because, at the end of September, I switched to a new ad network, and I’m now with Mediavine. See here how to find the best Adsense alternatives for your blog
- Ebooks –I sell my ebooks on my website for patients and physical therapists in both English and French.
- YouTube –This money comes from the ads placed on all my YouTube videos.
- Affiliate –I lump all the money I make from different affiliates in this sum because it can come from different places like Amazon Affiliates and other affiliates (Indy and Sensilia, french brands) linked on my blog.
Expenses:
Here are this months expenses:
- WordPress.com: €25
- System.io: €16
- Polylang: €12
- Payhip (+ Stripe/Paypal): €87
Total: €140
When you subtract the fees from the total income…
Profit for September 2023 = €3,275
*Note that this is before taxes. For me, they are about 30% in contributions, and then I also pay income tax (which depends on my husband’s income and the fact that we have 2 children).
- WordPress.com – This is my hosting and domain name. I pay annually, but I divided the amount by 12 to get an idea of what I pay per month as an expense.
- System.io – Tool that allows me to manage my newsletters and forms.
- Polylang – Plugin that handles multilingualism on my site. It’s a yearly cost, which I divided by 12. In other years, I won’t be obliged to pay, unless I wish to continue benefiting from their support.
- Payhip (+ Stripe/Paypal) – This is the platform that enables me to sell ebooks. Payhip charges 5% per ebook sold, and Payhip and Stripe together take an even lower percentage. It’s much less than what Amazon, for example, would charge, which is why I haven’t put my ebooks on Amazon.
Traffic Report
Now, let’s break down my traffic so you can see exactly how many people it took to come through my website to get these numbers.
Here’s what my traffic in September 2023 looked like
In total I had252,851 viewsfor my entire blog in September 2023.
Traffic Sources
You can see below where my traffic mostly came from. The top 1 traffic referrers were search engines (which is mostly Google search).
Visitor origin by country
And here is where most of my visitors come from:
Social stats
Youtube: 4,2k subscribers
Pinterest: 17 followers (You have to start somewhere! I began using Pinterest three months ago, but I’ve only been taking it seriously for the past month.)
Newsletter (french pro): 1,4k subscribers. I send a weekly newsletter to curious French physical therapists, doctors, and entrepreneurs about my dual role as a physical therapist and professional blogger.
Newsletter (french patients): 1,5k subscribers. I also collect the email addresses of patients, but I hadn’t been sending a newsletter to them until now. I just started in October!
A Few FYI’s about September 2023
September 2023 was a significant month for me: it was my first full month of making a living from my website full-time! I stopped my physical therapy practice at the end of August.
Well, to say the least, I had some surprises during this first month!
Let’s start with the good one: in January 2023, I was rejected by Mediavine, a U.S.-based advertising network that offers better income and services to small sites like mine.
Reason: not enough US/UK/Canada traffic.
So, I gradually translated my site into English starting in May 2023.
That’s what allowed me to join Mediavine in late September (see here my first blog income report with Mediavine).
That was the good news. Now, the not-so-good news.
If you’re somewhat informed about the world of website monetization, you couldn’t have missed it: around September 15, 2023, Google made a very significant update to how search results appear, known as the Google Helpful Content update.
Like many “small sites” like mine, I lost a lot of traffic, especially the lucrative US/UK/Canada traffic:
- Approximately 25% of my traffic comes from France drop.
- Approximately 80% of my traffic comes from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Germany drop.
This isn’t yet reflected in the stats because it happened in the second half of September.
However, I remain very motivated to make a living from this passionate profession: living by sharing my knowledge and experience in the fields of health and communication through writing!
We’ll see what the future holds…
If you want to look into selling like me your own ebooks, then be sure to check outTHIS POST! Anf if you’re looking for the best alternatives to Google AdSense for your site, read this article instead.
I hope this article has been helpful to you, whether you’re just curious or an experienced blogger. If you’d like to add something or if you have a question, please leave a comment! Until next time, perhaps!
Written by Nelly Darbois
I love writing articles based on my experience as a physiotherapist (since 2012), scientific writer, and extensive researcher in international scientific literature.
I live in the French Alps 🌞❄️, where I work as a scientific editor for my own website, which is where you are right now.
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